I'm finding it hard to get into a routine with cooking that involves real, healthy meals on the table at a reasonable time each night. Too often, I don't start thinking about it until seven (we like to eat at eight), discover there is no food in the fridge, then panic and end up making a quick pasta dish. I'd like to get into a better routine about planning and executing cooking, especially as we are trying to eat more fruit and vegetables.
Problem 1: Storage
We live in a small flat with a tiny freezer and nowhere to put another one, so although I would love to batch cook and freeze for the future, I cannot do that on a large scale. Subtracting some space for frozen peas and things, I end up with enough space for about four meals in the freezer, which is nice but not enough to make a big difference to our lives. Cupboard space is OK, and fridge space OK too (we shop little and often as we have no car).
Problem 2: Food preferences
My husband is an adventurous eater (much more so than I am!) and has two simple (and, I think, reasonable) requests when it comes to dinner: variety and flavour. I am very happy to eat the same meal for a few days in a row, but he simply will not eat today what he had yesterday. Again, this would not be a problem if I could batch cook and freeze as he would have the whole freezer to choose from, but at the moment it means cooking a totally new meal every day. He also hates bland food (steamed vegetables are anathema!) which is not the way I grew up eating, so I do sometimes struggle to think of things he will like (curry, we have established, is good). He can be a bit faddish, leading him Apart from this, he will eat pretty much anything, while I tend to avoid spicy food and lots of meat, and am intolerant to onions and garlic (there goes that flavour thing again...)
Problem 3: Lack of routine for me
My husband is studying so during term time I do most of the cooking and during the holidays it reverses. It's term time now, and I am struggling already to think of things to cook. When I was growing up, my parents did Pasta Monday, Chicken Tuesday, and so on. I think I could get away with this on a three-week cycle, maybe even two weeks, without his taste buds revolting, but it seems so hard to sit down and plan it all out. I am not very good at routines in general in my daily life, and so don't really have a daily structure I can fit it into, which is why it all tends to happen on the fly. I work freelance, so don't have much of an office-based routine. The only thing I have managed thus far is baking bread every Sunday morning while my husband is at church, because I know that happens at the exact same time every week!
Problem 4: Lack of cooking experience
I'm an OK cook, but only for the things I grew up eating, which were mostly vegetarian and repetitive and quite bland by my husband's standards! I am very willing to learn and experiment, but I think this is contributing to my problem in that I can't just think up new things to do - I tend to stick to my old favourites. I also grew up vegetarian which means that, while I now eat some meat and fish (and enjoy them!), I don't really know how to cook them as I didn't eat them during the crucial late-teen learning-to-cook years.
I would really love to hear about how you fit cooking into your lives and what routines you use to make it go more smoothly.